Mannequin Factory Tour

Shenzhen Adventure Day 20

26 Jun 2015

A question you dread your child asking – where do mannequins come from?

Well in today’s blog, we’ll find out!

This factory was very perspective changing. Usually, people think of China as
being for knock-off or unoriginal products, but the Mannequin Factory was
somewhat akin to a pop-art-at-scale Andy Warhol-esque plant. There were a lot of
original ideas and very skilled hand craftsmen. The company owner/head artist
was a very charismatic Chinese man, he gave us a really wonderful tour of his
facility!

Check out some of the really cool pieces designed here:

A mannequin starts with a sculptor making a small mockup to play with style and
form:

Then the sculptor produces a master mannequin:

Wireframe model.

Shaping the form.

From that mannequin, molds are made:

From the molds, mannequins are cast:

Casts are done using fiberglass

A particularly sad looking mold curing.

The factory operates at a pretty large scale!

A lot of casts being made!

I like this show because you can see casts being freshly opened and queued for
the next phase.

After casting, the mannequins are powdercoated/painted/glossed.

After painting, blemishes are marked and repaired:

Red tape is used to mark the faults.

Optionally, cosmetics (or other finishing touches) are applied:

The Archives:

They keep copies of various parts of mannequins that they have produced in the
past, in case they want to reference old work.

Headroom?

Water Treatment

This factory also has an on-site water treatment facility

It was not quite as involved as the one at the leather treatment facility, but
this factory does do a lot of sanding and painting so they treat their waste
water on-site.

Oddities

There are definitely odd things to see in a mannequin factory, or if not odd,
visually striking sights. Here are a few images, left without comment:

Lastly

I got a really fantastic parting gift at this factory… an arm!

This will be fun to take through customs…

I’d love to do a project with it like turn it into a handy desk lamp. It’s made
of a very nice quality wood.